Nikon D80

[kundalini]

Interesting. I would not have expected that.

Neither did I.

As far as tripods are concerned, I like to pass this little tidbit along from Thom Hogan. As most people will not go to the expense he suggests, there are pearls of wisdom in what he has to say.

 

[Mav]

^ I read that some time ago and laughed. That's waaaaaay overkill for most people, but you might want to pay attention if you're sporting 300mm or longer primes with or without teleconverters. It's pretty reasonable to be spending $1000 or so on support if you've got $5000+ lenses and want good results. Gotta pay to play.

Read also:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/tripods.htm
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/digital-killed-my-tripod.htm

I use a cheap junky lightweight Quantaray (Ritz junk) QT-100 travel tripod with aluminum telescoping legs. It collapses down to almost nothing, can squeeze into one side of my Tamrac messenger bag and just poke out the top a little, and is just sturdy enough to hold my D80 and the 18-135 lens (barely). I have something much much sturdier at home, but it's so bulky that it just stays at home and never goes anywhere else.

As far as "digital killed my tripod", I pulled this shot off with no tripod and no VR at iso1600 and 1/8s on my D80 and 18-55 lens. It was also windy and I had nothing to brace against. I took 3 shots and this was the sharp one, and the noise cleaned up nicely in DxO.

For the best night time shots, you want the lowest ISO and a long exposure though, and you certainly don't need fancy tripod/support systems costing hundreds of dollars.

10 second exposure on my junky QT-100, triggered via the ML-L3.

2 second exposure

Here's how dinky this thing is, but it works perfectly fine....

All of these photos were at more "normal" focal lengths though. Vibrations in your setup effectively amplify with increasing focal length which is why you need much more sophisticated support setups at beyond 300mm focal lengths. For most reasonable uses, cheap crap at Ritz or Wal-Mart is great. Like good ol KR says, a cheap junky tripod that's small and portable enough to actually take with you without being a burden is far better than a much better tripod you left at home because it's a pain to tote around. A paradox.